Procurement Transformed:An Introduction to Unit4 Source-to-Contract (S2C) by Scanmarket
According to a recent Amazon Business survey, 95% of decision-makers acknowledge that there’s room for procurement optimisation within their organisations. Unit4’s range of easy-to-implement source-to-contract (S2C) modules can deliver those all-important elements of visibility, control, insight, and efficiency that procurement managers and finance leaders are too often missing.
How can we curb erratic spending? Do existing supplier relationships represent the best value? Are procurement activities aligned with our broader goals? These are precisely the types of challenges that Unit4 Source-to-Contract (S2C) seeks to address.
Here’s a closer look at the solution and the benefits it can bring to your organisation.
Solution Snapshot: What Is Unit4 Source-to-Contract (S2C) by Scanmarket?
Overview
Unit4 S2C is a full suite of solutions designed to help optimise and manage source-to-contract processes, giving users enhanced oversight and control over spend, the ability to make better, data-driven procurement decisions, and also maintain compliance.
What’s included
The product suite comprises six modules. Unit4’s user-centric approach to adoption means that customers can choose to implement whichever modules are appropriate for their needs. All modules sit on a single S2C platform.
The modules are as follows:
- Unit4 Spend Analytics by Scanmarket. An analytics tool that delivers an accurate view of spend across all business units
- Unit4 eRFx by Scanmarket. Standardises tendering and supplier sourcing processes, and delivers the business intelligence you need to interrogate existing activity and identify under-performing arrangements
- Unit4 Contract Management by Scanmarket. Improves visibility into key contract information via a central repository
- Unit4 Supplier Management by Scanmarket. Automates the onboarding of suppliers, enabling you to access and report on all supplier data from a single repository
- Unit4 eAuction by Scanmarket. Provides structured processes to support negotiations, enabling like-for-like evaluation of potential suppliers and more rapid, accurate total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis
- Project Management by Scanmarket
Integrations
Its acquisition of leading S2C specialist, Scanmarket in 2022 means that Unit4 is able to offer a comprehensive range of S2C applications, fully integrated with its wider suite of ERP, HCM, FP&A, and Financials products on the Unit4 platform.
Users can also take advantage of Scanmarket’s open APIs, pre-built integration interfaces and tools to enable integration with existing ERP, supply chain management, and procurement systems from a wide range of vendors.
Deployment and Implementation
Unit4 S2C is 100% cloud-based, which helps ensure a quick implementation process. Typical implementation can take between just two and eight weeks, depending on how many S2C modules you wish to deploy.
How S2C helps solve common procurement challenges
Spend analysis
Problem: What are we buying, and who from? How much have we paid, and on what terms?
Even at the best of times, it’s important for buying managers and finance leaders to be able to answer these types of questions. Faced with squeezed margins and high costs, an accurate view of organisational spend is even more of a priority.
Too often, the data required for analysis is scattered across multiple departments and systems. It’s a recipe for poor decision-making, including duplicated orders across different departments and failure to capitalise on optimal payment terms.
Solution
Unit4 Spend Analytics by Scanmarket provides full visibility on company-wide spend via a pre-configured dashboard that can be tailored to your specific needs. You can drill into historical and real time company spending, identify opportunities for cutting waste and gather insights to help accurately forecast future spend.
Supplier Evaluation
Problem
The process of sourcing suppliers typically involves detailed market research and side-by-side evaluation, very often followed by a laborious procedure for creating and launching tenders.
Too often, inefficiencies are hardwired into the process. This is especially the case where an employee in one department starts an evaluation process from scratch, unaware of the fact that a buyer at a different branch has already carried out very similar research for a separate order.
Solution
Unit4 eRFx by Scanmarket provides a platform for standardising your entire sourcing process, enabling you to compare and rank suppliers effectively with just a few clicks. It also facilitates easier collaboration, enabling you to draw on recent successful sourcing events as the model for new projects.
Contract Management
Problem
After entering into a supplier contract, what happens next?
It’s all too easy for key documents to end up residing scattered across various local drives, email chains and department-specific directories. This means having to search around for the right version each time you need to check the terms (e.g. to resolve a dispute) or to answer a compliance query.
Solution
Unit4 Contract Management by Scanmarket streamlines your contract management process by consolidating all contracts into a single system. This allows you to track contract versions and approvals with collaborative workflows. It also comes with authoring controls and e-signature support, helping to speed up processes and providing full audit visibility of documentation.
Supplier Management
Problem
If an issue arises with just a single supply chain link, it can have major repercussions across your business. And in an environment marked by geopolitical disruption and economic uncertainty, it’s especially important to maintain visibility on supplier performance.
Is this supplier still financially and operationally stable? Are they continuing to meet contractual commitments and KPIs? What possible alternatives do we have in case we need to make a switch? Decision-makers need reliable intel on all of this.
Solution
Unit4 Supplier Management by Scanmarket delivers deep visibility across your supplier base, enabling you to access, report on and interrogate all supplier data and documents from a single repository, with configurable dashboards and numerous supplier segmentation options. If a potentially disruptive event arises, the solution equips you to respond proactively, e.g. by issuing questionnaires across your supply base and interrogating the responses via the system.
Contract Negotiation
Problem
Protracted back-and-forth phone calls and email threads, responding to ad-hoc queries relating to terms and conditions, analysis of large volumes of bids, having to wait until all bids are in before conducting side-by-side analysis: these are just some of the frustrations associated with the typical tendering process. It’s slow, inefficient – and hardly conducive to producing the best outcome for your business.
Solution
Unit4 eAuction by Scanmarket equips you to devise and deliver a much more streamlined and quicker process for tendering that’s more convenient for all stakeholders. Invite participants to participate in a structured eAuction that’s carefully structured to ensure that all parties have all the information they need, removing the need for protracted discussions, while also delivering absolute transparency. On completion, you have all the information you need to carry out TCO analysis and identify the best deal all round.
Find out more
For procurement managers, Unit4’s S2C suite provides the opportunity to maximise the value of existing supplier relationships while also making it much easier to identify and eliminate performance weak spots. The product suite should also be of significant interest to finance managers; bringing a much-welcome element of visibility into business-wide spending practices, and highlighting opportunities for optimisation.
For existing Unit4 Financials and/or ERP users, these solutions offer the opportunity to rapidly integrate best-of-breed S2C capabilities into your tech stack, utilising your existing Unit4 platform.
Talk to us today to explore further ways to transform your procurement processes and your options for Unit4 S2C implementation.